Edward Snowden’s ballerina lover: I’m lost at sea without a compass

The girlfriend of the defence contractor who blew the whistle on US government’s global surveillance programme today revealed her heartbreak at his disappearance.

Lindsay Mills, a former ballerina and pole dancer, said she was “lost at sea without a compass” after Edward Snowden left her in Hawaii and fled to Hong Kong to expose the government secrets.

Snowden, 29, yesterday fled his Hong Kong hotel and is holed up in secret fearing extradition and years in jail after revealing how the US’s Prism programme involved the secret monitoring of millions of phone records and Facebook, Skype and Google.

Mills, 28, said she had followed her “man of mystery” around the world for four years but now believed their relationship — which was thought by relatives to have involved marriage last year — was over.

She wrote on her blog: “My world has opened and closed all at once. Leaving me lost at sea without a compass.”

She said she was typing on a “tear-streaked keyboard” and added: “At the moment all I can feel is alone. And for the first time in my life I feel strong enough to be on my own. Though I never imagined my hand would be so forced.”

Her blog is packed with pictures of her semi-naked, including some apparently with Snowden and others showing her pole dancing with the Waikiki Acrobatic Troupe.

“I’ve always wanted to be splashed on the cover of magazines, with my best air-brushed look,” she wrote. “Unfortunately I wasn’t born a Greek, Amazon sex goddess — but a petite dreamer.”

Her relationship with Snowden, who was on a £130,000-a-year salary at contractor Booz Allen Hamilton but had been employed there for under three months, is thought to have begun in Japan in 2009.

They holidayed in Hong Kong last year and moved from their home in Baltimore to Hawaii.

The high school drop-out and former US Army reservist left her behind in Hawaii two weeks ago, not telling her where he was going or that he planned to reveal the largest amount of sensitive US data since WikiLeaks.